3 Tips for Creating a Winning Small Business Blog
If you’ve ever tried to create a small business blog, you might have struggled to develop content. What should you write about? Who should you write to? Do blogs really help advertise your business?
If you have questions like these, below we’ve gathered a few of our favorite small business blog tips for you to check out for yourself.
Small Business Blog Tip #1: Research Your Competitor’s Blogs
Before starting your small business blog, it’s important to research what kind of content is out there, and who’s posting it. Start by researching competitors in your industry that are creating blogs of their own and make note about what they are posting about.
This will this help inform you as to what kind of content is getting views, clicks, and likes, but it will also give you ideas for your own blog.
This can help you find out what keywords are important to your field as well. It’s important to incorporate keywords into your posts to improve your website’s SEO. That’s one of the main reasons to blog. Your blog posts can not only help give your users insight into trends within your industry but can also improve your search rankings as well.
Small Business Blog Tip #2: Incorporate Visuals Into Your Posts
Another tip for creating a great small business blog is incorporating visuals into your blog posts.
Since reading a blog post takes time for a reader, incorporating relevant visuals into your posts can help your readers stay engaged. A visual could take the form of an image, graphic, or video.
Research shows that readers remember 65% of the information from an article if it contains a visual against only 10% if it is just text alone. If your post uses a visual, this can help your readers remember important information from your blog and your company even after they leave your website. Maybe it’s a great infographic with key terms, tips, or information about your company or the topic at hand. Or perhaps a short video of you or your company explaining part of your blog post or giving the reader a look behind the scenes into your company!
You can get creative with your visuals to personalize your posts and make your readers excited to come back for the next post.
Small Business Blog Tip #3: Be Consistent in Your Posting
Our last tip is one of the most important to keep in mind: you need to be consistent in posting your blogs. This means figuring out what is realistic for you and your small business in terms of developing ideas and writing the blog posts themselves. You don’t need a new blog post every day, but you should try to publish something every week if possible.
You also want to balance “evergreen” content with timely content. Don’t write articles that will be dated in a few weeks or months. At the same time, if a new trend emerges your industry that’s important for your customers to be aware of, write about that topic and push back some of the other content that you had planned for a later post.
We mentioned this in our post about blogging for non-profits as well: that you need to go into your blogging with the mantra of quality over quantity. Be consistent on both the days and times that you post new blogs. You might try a few different days or times when you first get started, but once you find a time that works for you and your audience, stick to it. To help you do so, keep a folder for ideas and create a calendar to keep yourself on target for posting in the future.
There are many different ways to go about researching, writing, and maintaining your small business blog. If you’re just getting started, you can do worse than to follow these three tips, however. And if you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment or contact us!
